are partners in business. We find in a late number of the _Deutsche
Reform_, a journal of Berlin, an interesting illustration of the
extent and manner in which these frauds on the Russian revenue are
carried on, and translate it for the _International_:

"The great annual tea-burning has just taken place at Suwalki:
25,000 pounds were destroyed at it. This curious proceeding is thus
explained. Of all contraband articles that on the exclusion of which
the most weight is laid, is the tea which is brought in from Prussia.
In no country is the consumption of tea so great as in Poland and
Russia. That smuggled in from Prussia, being imported from China by
ship, can be sold ten times cheaper than the so-called caravan-tea,
which is brought directly overland by Russian merchants. This overland
trade is one of the chief branches of Russian commerce, and suffers
serious injury from the introduction of the smuggled article.
Accordingly the government pays in cash, the extraordinary premium of
fifty cents per pound for all that is seized, a reward which is the
more attractive to the officers on the frontiers for the reason that
it is paid down and without any discount. Formerly the confiscated
tea was sold at public auction on the condition that the buyer should
carry it over the frontier; Russian officers were appointed to take
charge of it and deliver it in some Prussian frontier town in order
to be sure of its being carried out of the country. The consequence
was that the tea was regularly carried back again into Poland the
following night, most frequently by the Russian officers themselves.
In order to apply a radical cure to this evil, destruction by fire was
decreed as the fate of all tea that should be seized thereafter. Thus
it is that from 20,000 to 40,000 pounds are yearly destroyed in the
chief city of the province. About this the official story is, that it
is tea smuggled from Prussia, while the truth is that it is usually